“The Liberal Democrat leadership suffered an embarrassing defeat last night as activists rejected Government plans to allow some courts to sit in private to hear evidence relating to national security.”

“The BBC has apologised for breaking the convention that private conversations with the Queen are kept off the record, but did the monarch break a convention herself? The news that the Queen had lobbied then-home secretary over Abu Hamza al-Masri was described by James Naughtie as ‘a corker’ but led us to wonder whether her intervention raised any constitutional issues.”